This is an archive of prayers, pledges, and song composed for, or relevant to, Earth Day, an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on 22 April 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EARTHDAY.ORG (formerly Earth Day Network). In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on 21 March 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. A month later, United States Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on 22 April 1970. He hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the National Coordinator. Nelson and Hayes renamed the event "Earth Day". Denis and his staff grew the event beyond the original idea for a teach-in to include the entire United States. More than 20 million people poured out on the streets, and the first Earth Day remains the largest single-day protest in human history. On the 20th anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, Hayes took it international and organized events in 141 nations. If you have composed a prayer for the Earth, please share it here. Filter resources by Name Filter resources by Tag Filter resources by Category Filter resources by Language Filter resources by Date Range
This is an excerpt from a speech given on 9 July 1965 by Adlai Ewing Stevenson Ⅱ (1900-1965), his final speech before the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. (The US ambassador to the UN passed away less than a week later in London on 14 July.) In 1971, the prominent environmental leader (and later executive director of Friends of the Earth) David Brower (1912-2000), described the quote as “A veritable universal pledge of allegiance to this planet and to its peoples” in his own speech, “What Organizations and Industry Should Do,” delivered at the First International Conference on Environmental Future, held in Finland from 27 June to 3 July 1971. The speech was published in the proceedings of the conference, The Environmental Future (ed. Nicholas Polunin, 1973), p. 478. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This earth pledge can be found in the Church of All Worlds’s newsletter, Green Egg, vol. 5, issue 47 (11 May 1972), p. 28. The quote, appearing after a line break of asterisks, concludes an essay by the newsletter’s editor, Tim Zell (a/k/a Oberon Zell-Ravenheart), entitled “personal affirmation of awareness.” Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This earth pledge can be found within “Earth Day” an essay by the writer and Unitarian Universalist minister Clarke D. Wells (1930-2006, and included in his collection Sunshine and Rain at Once (1981), p. 20. It is the only place we have so far located an earth pledge in the context of a prayer. Although published in 1981, the essay, including the prayer and pledge, was likely written the previous year in the lead up to Earth Day 1980. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This earth pledge by Carol T. Gaddy and Marianne Wolfman-Dawn is included in a short essay by Gaddy entitled “Our New Pledge of Allegiance.” The essay can be found in What Will It Take to Prevent Nuclear War: Grassroots Responses to Our Most Challenging Question (ed. Pat Farren 1983), p. 149. Carol Gaddy writes that the pledge “was composed spontaneously by me and Marianne Wolfman-Dawn as we marched on the road to Damascus, Arkansas, April 25, 1981, protesting the nuclear missile site where a Titan missile had exploded the previous November, endangering the people it was meant to protect.” Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This earth pledge appears without attribution in a justice, peace, and environmentally conscious Catholic textbook, Peace through Justice ((Diocese of Cleveland, 1983) by Louise Marie Prochaska. Sister Prochaska, however, does not recall composing it and it may have been circulating for some time in newsletters or other ephemeral works beforehand. On the page following the quoted pledge, the curricular resource recommends contacting the Union of Concerned Scientists for more information, but that recommendation may have more to do with the pedagogical theme of the section that included the text of the pledge. Among the earth pledges, it is unique. Instead of following the form of Bellamy’s Pledge of Allegiance, it uses an ABCB rhyme scheme. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This earth pledge by Maryann Shores was included in her published address of the first plenary session of Humanity’s Quest for Unity: a United Nations… colloquium in honour of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “proceedings of a colloquium held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, in conjunction with the opening of the 38th meeting of the [UN] General Assembly [26 Sepetember 1983]” (ed. by Leo Zonneveld, 1985), pp. 78-84. The pledge appears on page 78 of “A Positive Approach to Acceptable Peace: the Right Use of Human Energy.” Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This “Global Pledge of Allegiance” was written by Edna A. Meisner-Reitz in reaction to the 1988 US Presidential Election between George W. Bush (R) and Michael Dukakis (D) and was first published a year afterward in The Quest, vol. 2, issue 4, Winter 1989 (Theosophical Society of America). Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): The “Pledge of Allegiance to the Family of Earth” was offered by the Women’s Foreign Policy Council (co-chaired by Bella Abzug and Mim Kelber). The earliest publication of the pledge that we were able to located is as found in the article, “Earthlings Unite” by Nina Combs in Ms. Magazine, vol. 18:1&2 (July/August 1989), p. 19. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This Earth Pledge is attested in The Earth Pledge Book: A Call for Commitment (1994), an environmentalist work compiled and introduced by John F. Ince. While Ince did not author this Earth pledge himself, on page 143 in his The Teacher’s Guide To The Earth Pledge, he includes the following detail: “On the 20th anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, the [following] Earth Pledge was introduced at Stanford University.” Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This earth pledge was offered at the first of a series of lectures by Benjamin Ferencz at Kean College, New Jersey on 16 April 1991. Although the video recording of the lecture has not been digitized, the pledge was included in its description by the United States Holocaust Museum. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This earth pledge appeared on a poster attributed to one “Yvonne Alden” that was found in a collection of memorabilia from [National] Space Week 1994 at Brooks Air Force Base, in San Antonio, Texas. Space Week 1994 was a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. On the poster, the pledge appeared below an image of the planet Earth. The poster is mentioned by Jodi Dean in the introduction to her book, Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace to Cyberspace (1998), on page 20. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): Rabbi Seidenberg’s Prayer for the Earth is focused on global climate disruption (aka “global warming”), healing the skies, and the original blessing of creation. The liturgy is closely based upon the sun-blessing liturgy we used April 8th 2009. It is partly based on the Sefaradi liturgy for the Ushpizin on Sukkot, and on “Pri Ets Hadar” (The Fruit of the Majestic Tree) — the first ever Tu biShvat seder, included in the 17th century mystical work, Ḥemdat Yamim (ed. Rabeinu Yakov Ben Yom Tov Algazi). The prayer was first posted at neohasid.org, here. The prayer is based on the Pri Ets Hadar, Birkat Hachodesh, Sefaradi liturgy for Sukkot, and Malakhi 4, Genesis 9:14; Psalms 36, 78, 146; Deuteronomy 32:11, 11:12. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): May the words we are with Your help sharing today,
Speak deeply –- with Your help — to our nation and the world.
Help us all to know that the sharing of our breath with all of life
Is the very proof, the very truth, that we are One. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): An ecumenical prayer by Pope Francis from his encyclical, Laudato Si (praise be to you) from May 24th, 2015. Here’s my draft of a Hebrew translation of Pope Francis’ prayer for our earth. It turns out no one had translated it yet. The translation includes sparks from the High Holiday liturgy. I thought we should have it available for Rosh Hashanah, even though I’m sure the translation could use more work and more feedback. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): I offer here a prayer for the Earth, which you may wish to use in your personal prayer practice or as part of a community to which you belong. It could be included as one of the prayers after reading the Torah. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): Richard Shavei-Tzion writes, “At this time when mankind is wreaking havoc on our Eco-System, we pray to God to preserve the treasure that is the earth and to grant us the wisdom to make pro-active efforts to protect it for the sake of our future generations and all which dwell upon it.” Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This teḥinah calls us to remember that we are all personally, as well as communally, responsible for our relationship with the Earth. It also calls us to action, and to recall that even small actions realigning ourselves with the work of the Earth, can be seen as a mitsvah. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): |
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